Amid a raging debate over the relevance of end-semester examinations for award of degrees in universities, a former vice-chancellor of a university in Maharashtra has studied the semester-wise performance of about 250 students who graduated in 2019 and found that the last-semester results did not change their overall scores.

The academic, who undertook the study on his own initiative, wanted to see if the students would have scored differently had they not appeared in the final semester examination in 2019.

He collected the data of students who had passed three-year general undergraduate courses from three Mumbai colleges and examined their performance in each semester and the final Cumulative Grade Point Average, which is based on all six semesters. The university awards a Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) for each semester and a CGPA at the end of all six semesters.

“I tried to see if the score in the last semester made any difference to the final CGPA,” the professor, who did not wish to be identified because this was a personal initiative, said. He found “an almost consistent pattern of scoring” from the second semester onwards.

The performance in the first semester was somewhat poor, he said, adding this was understandable since the students were fresh out of school and unlikely to know the pattern of university education.

The variance in grade point average from the second to the fifth semester was 0.46, while the variance in all the six semesters was marginally low at 0.41. The variance would refer to the distance between the mean score from one semester to another.

The former vice-chancellor undertook the initiative for his own understanding after the Maharashtra government and several other state governments, including Bengal, differed with the UGC recommendation making last-semester exams mandatory.

The UGC last week said the tests would have to be held, either online or offline, by September.Faculty members and students are largely against the conduct of any tests for three reasons.

While the digital divide that puts some students at a disadvantage and the worry over the sanctity of an unproctored test are the arguments against an online exam, the rising Covid numbers make an offline exam too risky.

“If we feel that the sixth semester is a major determinant in the final result of students, then we must provide evidence. Taking an evidence-based decision will be appropriate,” the professor said.

He is now working on a similar study for engineering institutions. “There was a time when some universities were conducting exams annually and giving more weightage to the final-year exam. Some students were neglecting their studies in earlier years and preparing only in the final year. But after the introduction of the semester system, the students have little scope to be lax,” he said.

This paper sent an email to Prof R.C. Kuhad, who headed a committee set up by the UGC that recommended that the end-semester test is mandatory, asking him how the committee arrived at its conclusion. No response has been received.